I’ve been talking with a lot of agents lately who are deep into their 2026 planning. Everyone’s mapping out goals, adjusting budgets and sharpening their follow-up, but almost no one is asking the more important question hiding beneath all that planning:
How many people in your database are likely to make a move next year?
That question came into focus during a recent conversation with Drew Fabrikant, founder of Scout. We started off talking about buyer behavior and wandered into a discussion of every agent’s biggest blind spot — the mismatch between who we’re trying to convert and who’s getting serious about moving.
“There’s 87 percent of somebody’s CRM that will not transact in the next year. And that’s being generous,” Fabrikant said.
That figure explains an awful lot: the ghosted follow-up, the slow seasons that drag longer than they should, the sense that you’re pushing harder and getting less in return.
Most agents, it seems, don’t have a hustle problem. They have a focus problem.
The signals show up earlier than you think
This time of year, the number of move-ready buyers is almost always down, except in some specific resort and warm-weather markets. However, Fabrikant said, the people who are upstream in their real estate journey? That group is growing.
Scout’s data analytics see 39 million people exhibiting “some sort of homebuyer activity,” he said, with the number increasing heading into winter. “That’s the group that becomes your spring and summer business. And those signals appear months before any agent sees the activity in their CRM.”
The early-stage behavior Scout is tracking includes exploring the market, pricing out mortgages and researching the buying or selling process. That behavior jumped by more than a million people this fall.
While those aren’t active buyers and sellers yet, they’re the people who will become your spring and summer business. The time is “right now” to begin having conversations with members of your sphere of influence (SOI). If you’re planning for 2026, ignore that at your own risk.
Behavior beats demographics every time
For years, the industry has tried to reverse-engineer intent from demographics. Age, equity, length of ownership, life stage — all are helpful but incomplete. The stronger signal comes from what people actually do.
The way Fabrikant and Scout do this is by observing specific online activity. “What are they actually doing? Are they going on to mortgage loan calculators? Are they browsing on websites?” Finding the right predictive model, backed up by solid analytics, puts agents in elite territory for approaching the market proactively.
The path to a transaction doesn’t begin when someone asks for a CMA or an intro to your favorite lender. It begins months earlier, quietly, in the search patterns you don’t see unless you’re looking for them.
How to communicate with your 2026 pipeline
Interest rates have been the story of 2024 and 2025, and consumers are responding faster than expected as they ease down. “As we’ve seen interest rates come down,” Fabrikant said, “this is certainly a leading indicator of the people who are going to be acquiring new mortgages.”
One of the smarter shifts I’ve seen top agents make in preparation for an uptick in buyer and seller interest is treating their database less like a big bucket of names and more like a set of micro-funnels. Early-stage consumers need education and reassurance. Mid-stage requires clarity and timelines. Ready-stage is the time for specifics and next steps.
“It’s all about messaging. It’s all about distribution. How do you get out to that customer and say the right thing to the right person at the right time?” Fabrikant said.
Create content, distribute it to your sphere through social media and email, then check to see who’s engaging with that content. Move your audience into dedicated segments based on the content they engage with most.
When you stop sending the same message to everyone, two things happen:
- Your conversions go up.
- Your effort goes down.
Agents don’t burn out because the work is hard. They burn out because their effort is misdirected. By focusing on the right message at the right time, directed to the right person, you’ll get a lot more bang for your marketing buck.
Start with the database you already have
Before you set a production goal for next year, take a breath and ask a more grounded question: Who in my database is actually signaling movement right now?
Reach out and have conversations. Engage on social media. Schedule face time with repeat and referral clients. Track your analytics and see who’s engaging where. Stop basing your decisions on hope and assumptions; base your business plan on the behavior and intention of your sphere.
The agents who win 2026 won’t be the ones who work the longest hours. They’ll be the ones who work the closest to consumer intent.
- Know who’s exploring.
- Know who’s researching.
- Know who’s preparing.
- Know who’s actually going to move next spring or summer.
“If you know who to focus on, what you’ll actually see is a higher ROI… and a lower customer acquisition cost because you’re not spending as much to work them through the sales funnel,” Fabrikant said.
Underneath all the dashboards and drip campaigns and follow-up reminders, here’s the truth: Not everyone needs your attention. Not everyone is ready. Not everyone is moving. But the ones who are? They’re already leaving footprints.
You just have to know where to look.
